E 286 
.N7 
1858 
Copy 1 



o R ^ T I o isr 



r>ELIVERED BY THK 



HON. CALEB GUSHING, 



OP' MASSACHUSETTS, 



BEFORE THE 



Tammany Society, or Columbian Order 

T A INI INI A N Y H A I. I. , 
On Monday, July otli, 1858. 



NEW vukk: 

PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY. 

BAPirsr >^ TAYLOR, STEAM BOOK AND JOE PRINTERS, '• SUN- BUILDINO^ 

Corner of Nassau aud Fulton Slreet.-f. 

1858. 



^ 



CECKBR^TIOISr 



^ t^amman]) Soficti); or ColumMaii Drirer, 

OF THK 

Sid Anniversary of American Independence. 



"OUR COUNTRY," 

AN ORATION DELIVEKKU I5V HON. CALEB GUSHING, AT TAMMANT 
HALL, N. Y., ON THE FIFTH OF JULY. 

T ^' 

Fkllow CmzENS — I aui here to address j'ou, on this holy day, the unai- 
▼ersary of the national independence of the United States — But what 
shall I say ? As I rise to speak, innumei"able thick — coming fancies and 
thronging thoughts of nationalitj' and of patriotism crowd on the mind. 
I see, in imagination, all the noble hosts of the martyrs of civil and 
religious libo rty in Europe crossing the seas to found other empires of 
their own, by the rivers and lakes, on the mountaius and prairies, and in 
the solemn forest depths, of America. I behold a New "World, with its 
populous cities — with its agriculture, its commerce and its arts — with its 
institutions of knowledge and charity — with its brave men and fair 
women, and its happy humes — with its fresh, and elastic vigor of youth 
— born, a titanic progeny, out of the teeming loins of the Old World. I 
perceive the long procession of the great and the good, renowned states- 
men and famous warriors, the founders of the Republic. I witness the 
advent of imperial State after imperial State, as, heralded by the elo. 
quenco of senates and the tumult of ponular emotion, they march up, one 



alter the other, and wheel into the lines of the gian.l army of the Ame- 
rican Union. 

Which, of all these dazzling ohjeets, these reminiscences and premo- 
nitions of glory, as they pass along the lucid chambers of the intellectual 
viaiou— which shall the will of the orator call forth, if he in.iy, and arrest 
for present contemplation— which shall he endeavor to embody in epic 
M-ords, to wake anew to-day the echoes of Tammany Hall? 

What human lips, indeed, are worthy of the sublimity of such a theme ? 

It is Our Country, wiiieh on this day looms np in thought before us, with 

all the infinite ideas of past, of present, and of future glory, incarnated, 

as it were, in that great figure. Our Country ! It should be the footsteps 

of a celestial messenger to conduct us from bright point to bright point 

in the pathway of lier fame, that resplendent pathway. 

■' Whose (last is s<M, 

AiKl pavement stars." 

It should be the trumpet voice of a god to proclaim her glories from pin- 
nacle to answering pinnacle in the wide firmament of her power, as 
" leaps the live thunder " from summit to summit along flte ethereal heights 
of the mountains. 

Behold her, where she stands, in all the majesty and strength of her 
colbssal propoifions, the impersonation of republican liberty and order, 
the statuesque image of democratic energy and force, the great Ameri- 
can Republic ! 

The name of t'ommonvveallh is past ami gone, 
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe ; 
Still one great clime, in full and free defiance. 
Yet rears her crest, uncouquered and sublime. 
Above the far Atlantic. 

Aye, and not " above the far Atlantic alone," but now, also, above the 
far Pacific. She is the " Vestal " of unrivalled independence always, 
and still " throned by tho West," but with ft ot advanced towards that 
utter West, which on the circling earth joins the Orient East. Behold 
her, I say, as with the olive branch of peace in one hand and the image 
of victory in the other, she stands, her loins girt with the azure and 
white bands of the sky, and her head diademed with the constellated orbs 
of heaven. That is Our Country— to be loved, honored, worshipped, at 
all times— but on this day especially to be incensed with heart oflferings 
of adoration and of devotion by the universal acclaim of all, who bear, 
or deserve to bear, the name of American. 



Woxiderful, most wouderful is the providence of God! Geuerationi 
npou geueratious of men had lived and died, century after centurj, in 
Asia, Africa, and Eurjipe; great empires had risen up and flourished and 
passed away ; ignorance and wisdom, barbarism and art, joy and sor- 
row, love and hate, peace and war, h«d alternately swayed the hour, a« 
the tides of human passion ebbed and flowed; China, India, Assyria, 
Egypt, Pei'sia, Greece, Rome, had successively trod the empyrean paths 
of greatness, and had transmitted to modern Europe, some of their accu- 
mulated thoughts and arts, some their ruined temples, palaces and mau- 
Bolcea, some only the faint shadow of a name. All these great multitudes 
of men, these mighty empires had come and gone, like figures on a 
colisean amphitheatre, but with earth its scene, nations its actors and the 
universe its spectatoi-s. So was it in the Old World. 

Meanwhile, here was another and a yet unknown world, tlic predes- 
tined theatre of Time's last and greatest act. The waters of the broad 
Atlantic, daily, hourly, momently, for ages uncounted, made their voyage 
hither from the shoi'es of Europe ; and their ceaseless rote broke in vain 
along the rock-bound coast of Massachusetts', by the narrows of Narra- 
gansett or Manhattan, in the lordlybay of the Chesapeake, on the sands of 
Pamlico and Alatamaha. Mighty rivers like the Mississippi, the Ala- 
bama, the Potomac, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, the Hudson, the 
Merrimac, the Kennebec, the Penobscot — the great inland seas of Supe- 
rior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario — poured their useless tribute into 
the treasure deeps of the Ocean. Snow crowned mountains held their 
everlasting watch over the silent valleys of the Katahdin, 'Winnipiseogee, 
Adirondac or Alleghany. In the deep forests of the Monongahela, the 
Kanawha, the Ohio and the Wisconsin — by the green glades of the 
Wabash, the Kentucky and tiie Tennessee — by tlie fertile prairies of the 
Missouri, the Illinois, the Iowa and the Minnesota — along the sunny 
banks of the Catawba, the Santee, the Coosa, the Apalachicola and the 
Arkansas — in all these richest and lovliest regions of the habitable globe, 
constituting 

Niiture's whole wealth, yen, more — 

A Heaven on Enrtli— 

in all this world of promisa, there was no Immau life save that of the 
untamable and scattered wild men of the wools : it was the all-bounteous 
work of the Creator, but the imperfect work, as it were, of his appren- 
1* 



<3 



tice baud-for the Adam and Eve of the new creation were not yet co.ne 

to occupy that Eden of God. ,-.. . t> ■ 

I say once a.ain-wonderful, most wonderful, was that D.v.ne Pro .. 
aence, which liad thus prepared and held in reservation, as U were, tins 
paradise of the New World to be. not the asylum only of the wronged 
but the field of fame also of the adventurous, of the men o the d 
World • which, at the time of the intensest material and intellectual acti- 
vity of 'modern Europe, unfolded to its people the tabula rosa of America 
on which to write fresh lessons of political wisdom ; and which out ot 
the downfall of dynasties, and the agitations of religious enthusiasm 
and the fermentation of nations, evolved that greatest of the works o 
social organisation yet devised by man-the constitutional government of 
the United States of America. . 

Thereupon commenced an event, a series of events, unsurpassed m 
importance by any in the whole history of the human race-an event 
still in progress-the early stages of which only are perceptible to us 
and of which we ourselves do not as yet unhesitatingly accept and 
acquiesce in the consequence and results-I mean the exodus of Europe 
to America. Armed emigrations of nomadic nations have occurred far 
back beyond the date of authentic history in Asia and Europe ; similar 
events appear at, tlie dawn of modern history in the countries of the Medi- 
terranean; and, at a yet more recent period of time, the movements and 
countermovements of the nations of Europe and Asia produced or accom- 
panied the dissolution of the empires of Rome and Constantinople. But 
the nrovement of Europe towards America has been of individuals more 
than of nations; sometimes aided or favored by governments, but qu.te 
as often checked and obstructed by them ; and depending for its action on 
private not national, inducements and influences. Even Columbus had 
but permission to discover America ; and neither Cortes nor Pizarro had 
even permission to undertake the colonization of Mexico and Pern. And 
thus it was yet more emphatically in the case of the foundation of the 
United State.. Virginia. New York, Massachusetts, the Carol.nas. Mary- 
land Pennsylvania, each and all of them, though colonized by the nomi- 
nal authoritv of corporatiansor proprietary grantees in Europe, yet were 
not colonized by governments: and each of the great Colonies assumed to 
itself, almost at once, and by revolutionary act, the functions of local gov- 
ernment, half severing at the very outset their colonial dependence on the 
Mother Country. It is the inspiration of individual impulse from the 



beginning to tliis daj^, it is the idea of independence and self-government, 
it 13 the deMioeratic principle, •which, as it animated the infant Colonies, so 
it prompted the Revolntionary War, established the Union, and has never 
ceased to inform, direct and impel onward, the people of the United 
States, in their march of colonization and of conquest from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific shores of America. 

Fellow Citizens, I have thus unrolled before 3'on the map of the ter- 
ritorial greatness of the United States. I have reminded yon of the 
cardinal facts in the origin of the Republic. I have invited yon to do 
honor to the men, who founded the Government and established the 
Constitution of the Union. These are among the necessary topics of 
the occasion, which to pass over entirely would have seemed to be 
wanting to the historic memories of the nation's natal daj'. But they are 
topics of the history, not of the actuality, of our country, they are the 
dead Past, not the living Present. Let us now summon the Present 
before us, that we may see and feel " the very body and pressure of the 
Time." 

Eighty-two years have elapsed since the day, when, with courageous 
faith in the justness of their cause, and strong only in that, tlie Congress 
of the Thirteen Colonies uttered th'ir declaration of independence- 
Now, feeble insurgent Colonies no longer, we have gi-own to be popuIous» 
wealthy and powerful States. With numbers, riches and force, there may 
have come upon ua faction, corruption and presumption. As our debility 
had its inconveniences, so may our strength have, and tiie frugal virtue 
of the Fathers may have passed away, with no compensating quality to 
take its place in the character of the Sons. In a word, have not we of 
succeeding generations derogatcl from the higli standard of the founders 
of the Republic? 

I know that it is frequently asserted; it is a common suggestion, if 
not a common belief. It is not my belief. Whilst with pious reverence 
I render all due honor to the Fathers, I deny the imputed degeneracy of 
the Sons. 

Have occasional acts of legislative or administrative corruption dc- 
curred in our time ? So did they in the time of our fathers. I can easily 
find, in their day, incidents of ofiicial infirmity in this respect, to parallel 
any such in our day. lias presumptuous ambition, has intemperate 
struggle for place, has the spirit of faction, been apparent in our day ? 
So had they in the time of our Fathers. Nay, when I return, with calm 



8 

contouipiatiui), to tiie ineu of the Revulutiou — when 1 read, ns all may 
now do, their characters in the voluminous correspondence and original 
memoirs which have come down to us — 1 see that they also were men as 
well as we, ami had all the infirmities of our common nature. I do not 
perceive that we have degenerated. To see this, would be to despair of 
my country, and I, on the contrary, have unshaken faith in its vitality, 
its persistency, its brilliant destiny. 

1 aver that the present condition, not less than the history, of the 
Union, serves to prove its pre-eminent success beyond all other existing 
governraenta of Christendom. Let us see. 

I will compare the llBtited States, not witli the other republics of 
America, but witii the great states of Europe. 

They say we possess no adequate military organization. It is true, we 
do not support immense statidiug armies; but, fur tliat very cause, we 
rctaifi the larger reserved capacity of military execution in the hour of 
need. To suy nothing of our having encountered, witli glory unsurpassed, 
all the chances of a foreign war on the plains of Mexico, we have twic3 
chaliougod to arms that proud England whose child we are. Alexander 
would take part in the 01ymj)ic games if he might obtain kings for com- 
petitors. We certainly have had European antagonists worthy of the 
Republic. In the first war with England we achieved our independence 
on the land; in the second our independence ou the sea. We plucked 
from llie baniitrs of invading armies the laurels accumulated on them 
by a hundred victories ; we conquered the conquerors of Europe and 
Asia; for to us alone have British armies surrendered; and the triumphs 
of Saratoga, of Yorktown, and of the Thames, bear witness that the 
blood of our fathers of England, Scotland and Ireland runs red in the 
veins of their descendants in America. 

True it is, I know that our country is not bristled over with the bayo- 
nets of standing armies, and our land covered with citadel.", like France, 
Austria, Prussia, Russia ; but let no vain thought of our being militarily 
weak enter tlie imaginations of foreign enemies, if such we have, or shall 
have, in Europe or America. No, for every freeman of the United States 
is a soldior, cveiy city is a citadel of bravo men, every rural home is the 
fortress of the unit of an army, ready to be combined in a moment for 
the defence of the Union, Our militia is the inexhaustible reservoir of 
military strength. 

I witnessed this day the parade of the militia of the city of New York. 



9 

As they uiarelii'd along, bdttulion after batalioii, Si[ua<]rnn after «quatU'oii, 
battery after battery, infantry, cavalry, artillery, my lieart throbbed 
with exultation and pride. I have assisted, again and again, at parades 
and reviews of the picked troops of the old monarchies of Eiiro{)e and 
Asia. I declare that never, even in the ranks of veteran armies, did I 
see a better appointed body of troops, more exact in drill, more perfect 
in evolution, more soldierly in bearing, than those which this day passed 
before m_v eyes. I could not forbear to say to myself, as the Count 
de Boucicaiilt said of such a spectacle on one occasion — these arc men 
who, if the sky should fall, would bear it up on the points of their swords 
and bayonets. Yet here was the exhibition of but a single city, and the 
country is full of such men — men who, if not the equals of the militia of 
New York in military discipline, will not yield to them in courage, in 
patriotism, in readiness to fly to the field when duty and honor call 
them, and to shed their blood to the last drop in defence of the Union. 
Have not we of this generation seen it in the fields of Qneenstown and of 
New Orleans — have we not seen it on the plains and in the mmintain 
passes of Mexico ? 

Then, the}' say that popular commotion, or other ab-.ises of public or ot 
individual freedom disturb, our great citie?, and sometimes threaten the 
public peace in our frontier settlements. Civic disturbances — frontier 
commotion — forsooth! What is all that, compared with the desolating 
wars, the sanguinary insurrections, confisoations, exile and the axe, whicli 
are the daily experience of Europe? Remember that in these United 
States, since the close of the great conflict of the Revolution, during a 
period now of nearly seventy years of constitutional existence, no man 
has lost his life on the scaffold for political act, no man has suffered exile, 
not an acre of land has been sequestered, not an act of civil war has 
been perpetrated. Remember that during that time, while the peaceful 
series of our Presidents has been going on, with the regularity of the 
solar system, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Portugal, have seen 
their kings and princes torafrom their thrones, driven into exile, impris- 
oned, or ignominiously dying the death of common felons. Remember 
how, during that time, in France, revolution after revolution has r\m its 
career of madness and of blood. Remember the millions of men who, 
during that time have perished in the battle fields of Europe. Remember 
that, during that time, there is not a country of continental Europe 
where the husbandman has failed to see his harvest trampled into the 



10 

eartli under the feol of hostile armies, with Death and Havoc in their 
train. Ilctnember the domcstio wars which have, during that time, 
ravaged Poland, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ital^-, the Neflierlauds, 
France, Spain, Portugal, and that even England has not been without 
her bloody struggles in Ireland. Remember all this, and then complain 
if you will — reproach your country and its institutions if you dare — 
because cf some petty election riot or municipal outbieak in this or that 
«ity of the Union, or some not les.s petty acts of opposition to the gov- 
ernment, or wcrdy threats of opposition, among fiontier men in the 
distant wilds of Kansas and Utah. 

8hame on such complaints! When testtd by the touchstone of fact, 
the nervous timidity of niisapi)rehen8ion which they betoken, scarce rises 
to the dignity of a disi)eptic man's after dinner dreams of repletion. In 
all this we are but startled b}^ the shadows, which our own persons cast 
over the bright fields of our progress. 

Did we, the people of the United States, when we embarked on the 
great adventure of sovereignty, did we expect to sail foi-ever along the 
surface of smooth summer seas, with smiling skies over head, and favor- 
ing breezes to fill our canvass — with no reefs or shoals in our course, not 
even a drifting cloud on high to warn us of the emergency of some pos- 
sible act of manhood ; If we did so, if such be the temper of the people 
of the United States, then we are indeed unfit to rule ; and let us, the men 
of America, quit the helm of our navies, let us dismount from the horse- 
back seat of the command of armies, let us desist to handle the musket 
or point the cannon, let us cease presuming to hold in rapt silence the 
listening ears of senates, or to demand a))pluuse of popular assemblies — 
and let us turn over the earth's empire to tlie distaffs of our couniry, and 
see if they will not more hopefully and bravely govern the Union. 

No. Not thus did the people of the United States conceive of gov- 
ernment. Tho3' knew that with power must be perils and cares. They 
foresaw that, in the changes of time, troubles, commotions, insurrections, 
foreign wars, civil wars, might one after the other come upon us, as upon 
all other governments. Such is the inherent condition of all human 
afFaii-8. And all such hazards wc have been prepared to meet, as they 
should arrive, and we have met and overcome, with the spirit of a gener- 
ous patriotism, as became the free citizens of a republic. 

And so, dangers imaginary and dangers real, trials apprehended and 
trials endured, have come and gone, to be no more remembered than a 



11 

bleak winter dny, when it lias given place to the gay promise of spring, or 
the shock of a past combat as the conqueror ascends the capitoline stairs in 
triumph. All such trials have disappeared, like light clouds over th* 
disc of the sun, without leaving so much as a tarnish on the brigiit face 
of the Constitution of the Union. 

Fellow citizens — I do, most undoubtingly and emphatically, deny that 
the United States have derogated from the high standard of the heroic 
age of the Kevohition. In the softened light of the distance we see the 
men and the deed.s of tliat day in their groat outline; imperfections are 
shaded off to the eye ; it rests admiringly on the bright and fair trait.s of 
the scene; it willingly overlooks the unseemly ones; and thus we respect 
and revere without reserve, the limes of our fathers. Be that so. It is 
well that it should. T would not have it otherwise. Meanwhile, let us 
be just to ourselves, to our cause, and to our duties and responsibilities as 
the living men of America. 

What ! Is it nothing that we of the post-revolutiontu-y age have made 
of the experiment of republican and constitutional government a sublime 
consummated fact ? It is much easier than many ."cem to suppose to 
write a constitution of government. France, in sixty years, has produced 
a dozen of tliem, each one the assumed perfection of human reason. So 
the Mexican Republic alongside of us makes a new constitution every 
year or two, and suspends it the next day. That is not self-government, 
but the incap.icity of self-government. We, the people of the United 
States, have not occupied ourselves with the schocd boy folly of uprooting 
and replanting constitutions ; nor is ours the closet wisdom of a thcoreti. 
cal constitution monger, but the practical wisdom of the senate and the 
forum, of the market place and tlie workshop, of the engineer and the 
architect, which to the capacity of devising and planning adds the not 
less indispensable and equally high capacity of executing, of administer- 
ing and of preserving that which has been well and wisely devised and 
planned. It i.s, indeed, as the ancient lawgivers experienced, and as all 
history, ancient and modern, shows, a far more easy task to frame a con- 
stitution than it is to maintain it — than it is to breathe the breath of vig- 
orous life into the marble statue of p^wer, — to impai't to the silent words 
of the dry parchment the eloquence of truth and of authority — to make 
out of a charter a state, — and to pei'petuate the peaceful and healthful 
action of republican government. 

Is it nothing, T ask again, that wo have done this — that we have had 



llie forliluJe, the virluo, the self-denial, Ihe wisilom, and the courage to 
establish the constitii'ion, not in words only but in acts? Is it nothing 
that we have replenisiied the old Tliirteen States with population, wealth, 
intelligence, education, religion, arts, cultivation, commerce, manufac- 
tures, ships, steamboats, roads, railwaj^s, edifices, cities — in a word, 
with all which constitutes and adorns the highest civilization of Chris- 
tendom? Is it notliing tiiat from the exuberance of our vitality we of 
the original Thirteen States have created and peopled eleven other 
great States within the primitive territory of the Union? Is it nothing 
that we have acquired the vast additional domain of Louisiana, Florida, 
California. New Mexico, Oregon, and upheaved with our surplus moral 
force the whole continent of America, like a giant Enceladus beneath 
the mass of yEtna? Is it nothing that here, in the New World, we 
stretch our mightj' bulk from Ocean to Ocean, with all imaginable 
resources, tentorial, mineral, agricultural, commercial, within ourselves, 
and with such limitless capability of population, that, of necessity, now 

nd hereafter, whatever the}' may do or desire^ the powers of Europe 
must count with tlie colossal power of the United States? 

Hereafter, aye, in the long hereafter! For who may pretend that we 
have reached the zenith of our power ? We have not derogated ; that is 
seen ; the world is witness of our onward and upward progress thus far. 
But have we culminated ? Is the age of our glory gone ? Was that 
light of our power, Avhich rose so brightly, to blaze with superlative 
splendor for a brief time only on high, and then to go down, leaving but 
a memorial ray behind it to mark its disappearance beyond "the moun- 
tain tops of Death ?" It must not and cannot be. 

I do, indeed, sometimes hear men talk of the dissolution of the Union. 
A set of noisy and half crazy agitators here in the North tell us that the 
Union ought to be dissolved, because, they say, the Constitution of the 
United States is a "covenant with death and an agreement with hell," 
and thereupon the echo of their outcries occasionally returns to us in a 
declaration from the South, that the Union must be dissolved, because of 
the fact that so many of these wild theorists of negrophilism, and free 
love, and woman's rights, and irreligion, and socialism, and pine table 
spiritualism, are allowed to go at large in the North. 

Such persons, it is true, do e.\ist among us ; denaturalized women, un- 
happy that they are not men ; denationalized men, unworthy even to be 
such women. They, also, will assemble somewhere to-day, not as Ameri- 



13 

eaiis, but a* libelleiv and vilupeiators of America — to desecrate some ven- 
erable church, OP defile some sylvan shade — to say how much tliey love all 
black men, and how much they detest all white ones — and in the proianed 
name of Liberty, to proclaim their unappeasable enmity to the Union, to 
the Constitution, to the Bible, to their Country. 

Well, be it so. What, are there nut Americans enough in heart as well 
a^ in name, to preserve the integrity of the Union in spite of all these 
ravings of unloosed Bedlam ! Aye, ten, twenty, thirty millions of such 
devoted Americans, devoted to the Union, and who could and would, 
occasion requiring, devour and swallow up this handful of negrophili.st 
Union haters, as the boiling whii-lpool of iS'ingara overwhelms the slight 
skiff of some intoxicated Indian. 

Yes, we are strong enout^h in the light of our freedom and in the vigor 
of our country to tolerate and to pity all such impotent foes of the 
Union. I say, to tolerate and to pity them ; for when I witness their 
ebulitions of wild wrath, as they speak of the American Union, I become 
sure that their souls are writhing with distracted and " troubled 
thoughts" of the Fallen Spirit. Each one of them, as he gazes at the 
day star of the Union, seems with desperate passion to say — 

O Ihou, ih«l witli surpassing glory crowued, 
Lonk'st from Ihy sole domiuion like the God 
Of tiiis New World— to thoe I call, 
But with uo friendly voice, and aiid thy name, 
O sun, to tell Uiee how I hiite thy benms. 

Is it not SO? Is not that a true picture? Wei!, kt them hate and 
rave. Thej ar". indeed, to us in tho Nortl), where they hold their annual 
convention orgies, the drunken Helots of the commonwealth — useful to 
show forth the ugliness of infidelity and of treason, for the edification 
and admonition of the ingenuous youth of our Lacadremon. 

Dissolution of the Union by siich influences? I scorn the very idea. 
If is equally absurd in the mouths of those who threaten it as the means 
of aggression of the North on the South, and of those who threaten it for 
defence of the South against the contingent aggi'ossions of the North. 

But then, it is said, if such men do not imperil our institutions, 3'et 
others of larger aims and discreeter factiousness, who use them to disturb 
the popular mind, do: — others, who talk of "freedom " when they mean 
" power ;" who clamor continually of the imputed encroachments of the 
South on the North ; who organize and uphold sectional party eombina- 
2 



14 

tions, and whose avowed objects are the establibhrnent of a seotiooal 
administration of the Coustitutiun. 

Well, these I admit are dangerous men, who, not by their own slronglh, 
but by the dissensiotjs of the true friends of tlie Constitution, liave 
attained' but too much influence in the North. They are dangerous 
because tiiey have uo fixed principle, no stable convictions, no scruples of 
consistency to control their acts; because their only creed is what has 
been called "tiie duty of success;" and because their success, the suc- 
ct8sful accomplishment of a sectional organization of the government on 
the ruins of its nationality, would be the de facto dissolution of the 
Union. 

Their incessant cry is of the "slave power." If, perchance, now 
realms are to be added to the magnificent domain of the Union, though 
Buch uddilion be for the direct and superior benefit of the population and 
commerce of the North, they cry out on "slave power." If the revenue 
system of the Union is to be modified, though it be done by their own 
hands, and for the advantage of the manufacturers of the North, again 
they cry out on "slave power." If new territorial governments of the 
Union are to be organized in the West, though such organization be in 
the interest and to the gain of the North, still they cry out on the " slave 
power." If the dignity and honor of the Union are to be vindicated by 
wai", though the grievances to be redressed, and the securities to be con- 
quered, a' e at the North, always thej'^ cry out on the "slave power." 
Shumc on the parrot cry I Never, in the worst days of the worst factions 
of Greece or Rome, of England or France, was tiiero a more gross effort 
to inflame the popular passions by false appeals to prejudice — never a 
more wanton abuse of the fieedom of republican speech — never a more 
miserable and contemptible party cant — never a more abominable at- 
tempt to gratify personal ambition at the expense of a country's welfare 
and peace. Slave power! It is the cry of "stop thief" on the part of 
the burglar fleeing from the pursuit of the ofiicers of justice. 

We at the North have been addicted, more or less, now for the space 
of some twenty years, to persistent attack on the constitutional rights of 
the South. Busy mischief-makers, the "cankers of a calm world's 
peace/' have set up newspapers, formed societies, thrust themselves 
on the public attention, subscribed agitation funds, perverted legislation 
in the several States, and iisurped, as far as they might, the voice of 
Congress, in order, if possible, to impose their opinions and their intruded 



15 

authority on the sister States; Inboriug to destroy their property, and to 
exclude them from the common share of the inheritance and of the public 
rights of the Union. These acts of aggression, on the part of some 
Northern States as against those of the South, have been perpetrated 
under the shelter of our common government, when they would have 
been just cause of war as between foreign governments; and occasion- 
ally reach to such a point, that some States and Statesmen of the North, 
in the extremity of tlieir blind zeal, apply to their fellow citizens of the 
South, language of political and personal denunciation, fit only for the 
case of declared national enemies. And then, if, goaded by the sense of 
wrong, a State or a Statesman of the South recurs to defensive acts or 
words, there is another outcry of the " «laYe power." Meuutime, all these 
aggressive acts at the North are undertaken, we are continually told, in 
order to repel the aggressions and overthrow the domination of th« 
"slave power." 

Does the South doniinate over the Union i Ihat is the suggestion. 
It is a matter, in which I myself, a man of the Xorth, have, for one reason 
or anotlier, felt a little interested, and which, as a matter of philosophical 
study well adapted to au hour of rural idleness, under the shade of green 
trees, and with the melodies of the many-voiced sea to lull me into the 
mood of tranquil contemplation, I have undertaken to investigate. 

My friends, you know we naturally, almost necessarily, regard things 
from our own standpoint, at least in the first instance. I, therefore, in re- 
jecting on the present question, began in this way, that is, from the point 
of view of my own State of Massachusetts. It rather aeemed to me, on 
looking back, that Massachusetts had had a pretty fair run of the power 
of this Union. Two Presidents, two Vice-Pi"esidents, place on the bench 
of the Supreme Court for sixly-six out of sixty-nine years of the federal 
government, a seat in the Cabinet; of sixty-seven of the sixty-nine 
years. Secretaries of State, of Treasury, of War, of Navy, of Justice, 
most of them again and again, and one or another almost always ; Em- 
bassies without number, and a half monopoly of the most important one, 
that of St. James; and a potential voice always in the councils of the 
government and of the people — a voice, which, when it did not rule by 
the authority of office, yet governed by the higher authority of Genius, 
of Virtue, or of Eloquence, and which never spoke but to penetrate, as 
with an electric flash, to the uttermost bounds of the wide Union. Is it 
not so f When was there a day that an Adams, an Ames, a Quiney 



16 

Adams, a Webster, an Everttt, a Choate, did not live to maintain by 
voice and pen, by opinion and act, the duo ponderancc of Massacluisett* 
in the conduct of the public affairs of the United States? When was there 
a day that M i ssacliusetts did not, from [the exuberasice of her political 
wealth, furnish a King, a Marcy, or a Bancroft, to be accepted and hon- 
ored even here in the Empire State of Now York? And jet in the face 
of all this, and with some personal reminiscences of my own to aid me 
tc the conclusion that Massachusetts men are prone to be, I will not say 
domineering, but dominant enough, either in Congress or in the Oabiuet, 
I am to be told that the South dominates over the North. 

And Now York, the Empire State of the Union, what is her testimony 
in this present issue of the alleged domination of the South over the 
North? Were the Hamiltons, the Jays, the Livingstons, the Burrs, and 
the Kings, of the early days of the republic, men without wills of tlieir 
own? Were the Clintons, the Tompkins, the Van Burens, the Wrights 
and the Marcjs, of a later day ? Why, who does not know — what school- 
boy of the first form is there so ignorant as not to have heard, not only 
that these men of New York ruled in their time and turn in the high 
places of the Union, and ruled by the ijitellectual right divine stamped 
on their immortal brows, and ruled as men of the North, in their 
proper persons — not only this, but that history is" now preoccupied with 
the question whether they did not also in fact rule when the titular 
places of power were held by the South? 

The Soutli dominate over the North, with New York in it, and holding, 
by her population, her wealth, and her power, the hegemony of the 
North? New York, who assumes in the scroll of her arms that she i« 
ever to be uppermost, — Excelsior, — ^just as Charles of Spain inscribed 
" further yet " on the pillars of Ilereules. Oh, most absurd, most pre- 
posterous, most ridiculous of all the foolish imaginations, which ever 
entered into the head of wayward man. Whj^, the South, like the North, 
struggles and struggles in vain to escape from the authority, and to shako 
off the ascendancy of New York. 

lu the first place God gave to j^ou this unequalled seat of power. It 
was no deliberate calculation of relations and consequences, which 
brought hither the men of the United Provinces, the pioneers of civil and 
religious liberty, and of public law and right in modern times, to found 
this groat State on the island of Manhattan and along the banks of the 
Hudson. It was no deliberate calculation of relations and coneequence* 



17 

wLiih exUudv.i the charier «)f the Duke ot York northward nud west- 
ward to the Gretil Lakes. It was no deliberate calculation, 1 say, t>l' 
relations and cons.'quences, which brought the Hollandor and the Enf ■ 
lishman here, where the waters of the East aud the North Rivers meet the 
Ocean, to invite the navies of the world to enter and to harbor ; heie, in 
the State of New York, where alone along the whole line of the coast, 
the AUeghanies are cloven down to their base, and there is a natural 
channel from beyond the mountains to the sea ; here, where the great 
level extends for hundreds of miles fnr into the interior land, aa if created 
for the reception of canals aud railways ; here, where the waters of Onta* 
rio and Erie, as they lave your shores, assure to you equal command of 
the inland and outiand seas of our country, of the East and of the West, 
*o that earth and ocean alike serve to seat you forever on the commercial 
throne of America. All that, I say, was the work of Almighty God' 
and cannot be undone by men, either men of the North or men of the 
South. 

Nobly, most nobly, however, has man seconded this, the work of 
God. I remember that, towards the close of his life, Washington was 
occupied with thought of the future rise of the grand emporium of the 
United States on the waters of the Chesapeake, by reason of their actu- 
al nearness to the great interior world of the West. His thought was a 
reasonable one. But he reckoned without the State of New York. So, 
also, it was when, at a later day, schemes of internal improvement by 
the federal government, based on the same thought, had the same point 
of departure ; and then rose up the men of New Y''ork, with De Witt 
Clinton at their head, and while Congress debated they constructed the 
Erie Canal, and there was imagination no more of the supremacy of the 
waters of the Chesapeake. And with all the wealth of America center- 
ing here — with this forest of masts all around us — with whole navies 
of steamships to connect the United States with other nations through 
this port — with the multifarious products of every country of the earth 
filling those palatial magazines — with all climes and region.^, cisatlan- 
tic and transatlantic, oriental and occidental, emulously pouring them- 
selves, their riches and their intelligence into the lap of New Y'ork, will 
you continue to tf>ll me that the South domineers over New York and 
the North ? 

But some simple hearted person may eay, is there nothing in the cry 
of " elttve power?" Is it mere faction and falsehood from beginning to 
2* 



18 

end? I do indeed think it is utterh' destitute of any foundation in 
fact. I had long and diligently sought, in the proper quarters, for it« 
pretendod foundation, and it it: but recently that I have discovered it 
in a much applauded speech of one of the senators from the State of 
New York. Tiiat eminent person, if any one, may be presumed to 
understand the subject; and he explains the mj'stery of iniquity thus; 
It appears that when the Constitution was adopted, and for some time 
afterward, there was but one free labor State in the Union ; all the rest 
were slave labor States. And so the slave power got the upper hand, 
and lias held it "almost uninterruptedly" ever since, notwithstanding 
subsequent changes in the relative number of the fi'ee labor and slave 
labor States. That is, New York and Pennsjlvania having been at the 
beginning slave holding States, their power is slave power. I hope 
and trust that iu this lamentable state of things, New York will con- 
tinue to govern herself in all tenderness and mercy, and will, more- 
over, have a little consideration to spare for the rest of the North, and 
especially for Massachusetts, who, as the only original non-slavehold- 
ing State, is helplessl}'' dependent on the "slave power," and its repre- 
sentative, New York. 

My friends, I pray you not to laugh at these falaeies, ludicrous aa 
ihey are, with which aspiring men seek to insurrectionize the whole 
North b}' factious appeals to the falsely imputed domination of the 
South over the Union ; for the avowed object of such appeals to mere 
prejudice a-id passion is sufliciently serious ; it is not merelj^ to change 
the administrators of the government of the country, but also to change 
that policy of democratic nationality, which has prevailed in the 
nation for so many years, and has been the efficacious instrument of 
the support and elevation of the Union. 

CJod forbid that this should be ? The Constitution was inaugurated 
by the men who had made the Revolution. So long as their great 
leader in peace and war, the t^-pical man of the Revolution, Washing- 
ton, lived, party divisions were of secondary account in the govern- 
ment of the United Stales. When he died — when the work of con- 
structing and setting in motion the machinor^' of the Union had been 
done — then the people of the United States began to discuss and divide 
upon the theories of administrative policy ; in other words, to form 
into political parties ; and the history of the country exhibits the memo- 
rable fact that from that day to this, with brief, and apparently'btit 



19 

oaaual interruption, one grand party has controlled the adminietratioB 
of the Government. 

It has been the fortune of that party to initiate all the great mea- 
sures of administration, each one of which the adversary party opposed 
in their inception, to acquiesce in them afterwards as fact, and to 
accept if not to approve th6ni as theory. I can remember but one 
great measure of policy, foreign or domestic, which had any different 
origin — I mean the subsisting imperfect arrangement of the common 
relations of Great Bx-itain and the United States to Central America — 
and that has never been anything but a stumbling block and an offence 
in the path of the Union. All the signal steps in the progress of the 
countrj', as the acquisition of Louisiana, Florida and California, the 
accession of Texas, the vindication of our rights on the side of Great 
Britain and Mexico by the successful prosecution of war with each, the 
successive adjustments of the financial system of the government, the 
determination of the proper relation of the territories to the States and 
the Union — all these are the work of the same democratic and national 
association of men and interests, which still presides over and adminis- 
ters the United States. 

All this, we are told, is to be changed, for the ver^- reason that it is 
national ; for the reason that the time-honored theory of administration 
refuses to be sectional — refuses to defer to the exigencies of the Northi 
80 far as to disregai'd the rights of the South — refuses, in its paternal 
justice, to see or know that there is a North or South, an East or West' 
and looks only with impartial eye on the whole undivided Union. For 
this the people of the United States are to be persuaded to substitute 
a sectional administration ; or, to speak more accurately, the people of 
the North are invited to make a second effort to impose, by their sec- 
tional votes, such a sectional administration on the people of the United 
States. 

Can this be done? Will it be done? 1 do not believe it. I can see 
on the one hand, a political association which holds in its keeping the 
traditional public policy of the countrj- — which, at both ends of the 
country, North and South, courageously and conscientiously assumes 
the burden of nationality, in defiance of local jealousies and prejudices 
— which alone professes a constitutional political creed, and follows a 
constitutional theor}- of action — which calmly but resolutely, maintains 
our international rights in all emergencies ; and which is constitution- 



ali^' coudei'valive, because it \a democratic in piiiiciple, uud thus c-uticil- 
iates together the rights of the States and the rights of the universal 
people. I see, on the other hand, a political association, which is not, 
indeed, an association, but a loose conglomerate only of the fragments 
broken oft' from other associations ; which has no definite platform of 
doctrines, and floats at random on the tide of public policy, in the hop« 
of picking fp some chance helmsman, it knows not where, who may 
bring it into port, which lives only by hateful vituperation of th« 
South; which is the refuge and receptacle of all the crotchety i»m» of 
the day. 

Both all vain things, aud all who In vuin tbiags. 
Build their fond hopes of glory or lasting fame, 
All the unaccomplished works of nature's hand. 
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly niiied— 

tossing and whirling about in that Limbo of Vanity. Can those eminent 
men, who, on the dissolution of previous political associations, have 
improvidently allowed themselves to drift up into that limbo, govern 
and guide their heterogeneous, incongruous and impracticable compan- 
ions to any useful purpose, either in the attainment or the exercises of 
power! I doubt. They may do it, I admit, in single States. I deny 
that they can do it on the broader field of the Union. 

How are tho sectional agitators of the North (o break down the 
nationality of the Union, unless they unite the Kovth, and the whole 
North? They cannot do this without Pennsylvania, and she will not 
falter in the time of trial. They cannot without New York, and she will 
not be so mad as to allow petty personal dissensions to sink her into a 
mere dead-weiojht in the political scale of the Union. They cannot with- 
out the West, and how are the anti-national interests of New England 
and New York to combine with the West, when the former, while deny- 
ing equnlitarian rights to Europeans in America, strive, in the sense- 
lessness of their negromaniac philanthropism, to force up Africans into the 
impossible position of equality with us, and when the latter, whilst wel- 
coming Europeans to their arms, are unanimous in the policy of disfran- 
chising and expelling Africans? Out of that condition of things is there 
to be a sectional com))iiiation of the North on the issue o( the condition 
of Africans in the Unitel .States? It is not posssiblc. 

Nay, it is in the power of a single State, of you, the intelligent and 
powerful State of Nt w York, to say that there shall not be. aa there 



21 

ought never to be, auv other than a generous and lofty national adminis- 
tration of tbe government of (he United States. 

In the accomplishment of the great purpose of national concord, this 
Society, the long established representative body of the doctrines and 
principles of nationality in the c'ty of New York, cannot fail to exert the 
most salutary influence, not here only, but in the whole State, and 
throughout the United States. 

It is but for New York to say it, and we shall emerge at once out of 
this murky atmosphere of unprofitable contention regarding Africans, 
into the bright light of the great interests of the Union. 

We have long enough sacrificed the interests of all the wliite men of 
the United States to sentimental and transcendental solicitude fur the 
black ones. Higher, infinitely higher objects invoke our care, both in the 
domestic and in the foreign relations of the Union. We need only castour 
thoughts a few years forward in the march of events, to the time when 
we shall be a hundred millions of human beings, and fortj- or fifty con- 
federate States, to see how contemptibly insignificant are the controver- 
sies of the hour, how unworlhy <'f the great destinies of the United 
States ! 

May the memories and associations of this anniversary revive the spirit 
of nationality within us, and elevate us to a just perception of our duties 
and responsibilities to Our Countrj'-. In every quarter of the wide 
expanse of the Union this day, from Minnesota to Florida, from the 
Passamaquoddy in the farther East, to the Colorado in the farthest West, 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there is one universal and spontaneous 
jubilee of gratulation and joy. In every distant sea, wherever an Amer- 
ican ship floats, the national banner will be unfurled to the breeze in 
honor of the independence of the American Republic. The boom of 
cannon will sound in triumph from city to city, along the shores of the 
Atlantic and the Pacific — it will roll through the broad valley of the 
Missouri and the Mississippi, over forest and savannah, from lake Itasca 
to the Gulf of Mexico — it will startle the wild Indian as he chases the 
Buffalo on the flanks of the Rocky Mountains. From the lips of thirty 
millions of men will go up the voice of patriotic emotion to fill the vault 
of Heaven. 

And so may it be forever and ever — until time shall be no more, and 
the last trump shall sound to summon the quick and the dead alike to th« 
judgement seat of God. 



22 

Accuised be he, that Aiuerican, if such there be, in whose torpid 
bosom the emotions of patriotiem do not well, sparkling up this day as 
from the bosom of a perennial fountain. Accursed be he, to be driven 
out like a recreant knight from the lista, with the brand of "niding" 
upon him, no more to know the transport of woman's love, or to walk 
erect in the estimation of men. We at least, here within the walls of 
Tammany Hall, and now, while the roar of cannon, and the ringing of 
bells, and the hurrahs of our countrymen, are sounding over Earth and 
Sea, here and now we exultingly raise our voices to join in the choral 
unthem of a nation's joy, and to swell the diapason of a nation's concla- 
mation of praise to God, that He gave to our Fathers this fair land for 
their inheritance, that He inspired into them the spirit of Nationality and 
Independence, that He lifted up the Thirteen Colonies into Sovereign 
States, that He made of us one people, and that, as by His creative hand, 
He reared, so by His almighty will He preserves, the superb worth of 
this ever glorious constitutional Union. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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